A Hamptons Christmas Read Online Free Page B

went wrong. I said hi and moved my stool next to his.

    â€œEasy for you to be cheerful,” he said. “You’re not putting an addition on your house.”
    â€œWell, I guess. Who’s your architect?”
    â€œThat’s where you delude yourself, Stowe. You buy a software package for seventy-five bucks and short-circuit all that.”
    â€œI’m sure,” I agreed, knowing nothing in the Hamptons gets people so aroused as real estate. Better than Viagra. I called for another cerveza.
    â€œExcept they insist on a new survey before you start.”
    â€œWell …” I said, somewhat out of my depth, “what does a survey cost?”
    Mellish slammed a big hand on the bar. “There’s the heart of the matter. There are two local surveyors, a WASP and a guinea. Do you prefer to be cheated by the Establishment? Or by the Mafia?”
    â€œI’m not sure that –”
    â€œNo one’s sure, Stowe. That’s where they have you. I got the WASP. Seven hundred fifty dollars was the fee he quoted …”
    â€œSounds about right.”
    â€œBut when I told him I was scrapping that little wooden deck out back and asked him to omit it from the survey, he grew difficult. ‘Can’t do that, Mr. Mellish. If it’s there, by law I have to include it.’ … Christ almighty! I was demolishing the damned deck to build a new bedroom on the footprints.”
    â€œAnd?”
    Mellish just shook his great head.
    â€œTo get a permit, you need a contractor. He gave me a September completion date. And hasn’t yet begun! ‘My digging machine broke.’ Then two of his best men were in jail, Shinnecock Indians for rioting at the CATV station about rock versus rap music.”
    See what I mean about the Hamptons out of season? I turned to chat about Bali with Lee the owner, who’s big and handsome and known as Surf God.
    Other people drifted in now, and Surf God was distracted, so I went over to the little girl. Reporters are like that, curious.

    I told her my name and asked how old she was. “Twelve,” she said, “practically a teenager.”
    She was pretty small, and I’m not much good at ascribing motivation or guessing age. She was a skinny little kid with a Dutch Boy haircut, huge gray eyes, a freckled snip of a nose, and straight teeth, but, to me, she sure didn’t resemble a teenager, and I must have looked skeptical. “Well, I’ll be eleven soon,” she conceded, finally admitting to ten. I was still betting nine. She offered me a Gitanes before providing an entertaining song & dance about grandparents mysteriously absent from their East Hampton estate. When I informed her the last train back to Manhattan had left and the first one next morning would be at six, she inquired as to which were “the better hotels” in town.
    â€œThe Maidstone Arms,” I recommended cheerfully, since we have very few hotels good or bad, and the Arms served an excellent Sunday brunch, “None better.”
    â€œIn the Guide Michelin? ”
    â€œI’m sure.”
    She jotted a note with an impressive gold Mont Blanc.
    â€œShouldn’t you call your parents to tell them of your change in plans?”
    Not possible, she said. They’d been injured in a recent suspension bridge collapse in the Peruvian Andes. I wasn’t buying much of that and had begun wondering, was I doing the right thing and ought I instead just call the police?
    She asked me what work I did, and I was soon telling her stories about being a correspondent as other Blue Parrot regulars began to join us. Mellish was especially good, cursing and swearing at a great rate about contractors and surveyors. The kid seemed to like that and told us her name, Susannah le Blanc, and said that since she was being educated in Switzerland, a country with three official languages, she was blessed with “the gift of